Why you should spit out your energy drink

Want to be a better athlete? Well, forget altitude training and high-carb diets â it’s your taste buds you should be concentrating on.

Swilling a sugary sports drink around the mouth before exercising can apparently boost performance â even if it is spat out afterwards.

Spit? Energy drinks

Sugars â carbohydrates â in liquids such as energy drinks fire receptors in the mouth which stimulate the brain to increase output, tests found.

The result is an average two per cent boost in exercise performance, with the added bonus of athletes not even feeling as if they are working any harder.

‘Much of the benefit from carbohydrate in sports drinks is provided by signalling directly from mouth to brain rather than providing energy for the working muscles,’ said physiologist Dr Edward Chambers.

Energy drinks have long been known to boost exercise performance but experts have said the sugar hit alone is not enough to explain the improvement.

Dr Chambers’ team found that cyclists who sipped and spat out drinks laced with carbohydrates outperformed those who did the same with drinks laced with artificial sweeteners.

The sugar-drinking group finished a one-hour endurance test two per cent faster.

Previously unidentified receptors in the mouth sent pleasure signals to the brain, which reduced the cyclists’ perception of the workload, said Dr Chambers, of Birmingham University, in the Journal of Physiology.